Associação Brasileira de Estudos Irlandeses

MUNIRA HAMUD MUTRAN RECEIVED AN HONORARY LITERATURE DOCTORATE FROM THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, MAYNOOTH

For 25 years Professor Munira Hamud Mutran has been a pioneer in developing Irish studies in an international arena and in particular the informing spirit in its development, throughout South America. She has inaugurated Irish Studies as an academic discipline in the Brazilian university system and has been a highly influential cultural ambassador for Ireland in South America.  She received a Degree of Doctor of Literature today.  Professor Mutran has published 12 books as well as 50  articles and book chapters, mostly in the field of Irish studies (fiction, drama and cultural history) and Irish-South American studies.  In 2002 she hosted the annual International Association for the Study of Irish Literature conference in Brazil and has been an active member of that association, including Vice-President, over the past 25 years; she has also been the key organiser of the annual Bloomsday celebrations in Brazil'. In 2006 working with her close colleague Professor Laura Izarra, she organized the first symposium of Irish Studies in South America, which continues on an annual basis. Currently she is the co-director of Da Irlanda para o Brasil: Textos Criticos, a multi-volume anthology of Irish cultural criticism to be published in Portuguese. (from website NUIM, 12 June 2008).